


Detonation

by Volavi



Series: The Uncertainty Principle [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Dick Grayson is Batman, Established Relationship, Explosions, Gratuitous references to physics, Jason's POV, M/M, Major Character Injury, Swearing, Whump, dick!bats, hurt!Dick, jaydick, no fights, the violence is a bomb that results in an exploding Batmobile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 10:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11598849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Volavi/pseuds/Volavi
Summary: Action movies lie. The chemical reaction of an explosion happens in an instant. Heroes can’t leap out of an explosion or outrun the blast once the reaction starts. Not the human ones anyway. Not even Bruce Willis. Not even the fastest member of the Batclan could have . . .----------Dick is Batman. The Batmobile explodes. Jason sees it.





	Detonation

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Detonation 爆炸](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959374) by [Lalaith_Airfree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalaith_Airfree/pseuds/Lalaith_Airfree)



> This takes place sometime after Batman, Inc., if Damian hadn't died. Warnings covered in the tags, but this is an intense fic. But I promise you that this isn't a death fic.

Red Hood patrols alone. Safer that way. Easier that way. 

Not to say that Red Hood and Nightwing never meet up on top of the tallest towers, away from prying eyes and security cameras, shielded by the shadowed spires and gloomy gargoyles.

And of course they chat on the comm, the private one just between the two of them. Sometimes the shift between their conversation on the group channel where they pretend to barely tolerate each other and the private channel where they flirt causes mental and emotional whiplash. The family doesn’t know, and Jason wants to keep it that way. At least for a while longer, and Dick is willing to play along. Sometimes it frightens Jason, the things Dick is willing to sacrifice to keep Jason happy.

No chatting tonight. Bruce is out of town, out of the country, out of the damn solar system. Dick has been playing Batman for the last week, and by unspoken mutual agreement they don’t talk much when he is in the cape and cowl.

Jason swings across a street, making his way in a meandering fashion towards the financial district, where he plans to pause on top one of those big skyscrapers and have an unrivaled view of the city.

Though tonight they don’t acknowledge each other, aren’t working together in any kind of planned way, Dick and Jason are the only ones out in the Gotham drizzle. Cass is in Hong Kong, and Steph, nursing a badly broken arm, is spending a week with her as a tourist. Red Robin is on the opposite coast with the Titans, and Damian is with the O.G. Batman, experiencing his first ever space mission. Goddamn, B and the demon spawn need to get back soon, because Red Hood misses Nightwing more than he wants to admit.

Jason reaches his planned stopping place. He thinks about taking his helmet off, breathe some unfiltered air for a minute, but the rain stays his hand. Out over the ocean, thunder rolls. Seems like the weather is going to get worse before it gets better. The rain beats down harder, faster.

Jason is about to fire his grapple and move on when, even over the increased volume of the rain, he hears the distinctive sound of the Batmobile roar. He pauses for a second, searching for the speeding vehicle, and can’t help a hint of a grin twitch up his lips for a second. Doesn’t matter if it’s the Batmobile, his Nightwing motorcycle, or his GCPD cruiser, when he thinks he can get away with it, Dick always drives like he’s in a car chase. Probably Bruce’s fault. Bruce took a kid who already had a warped sense of danger because he practically learned to walk on a tightrope and had him watching Batman drive from an impressionably young age.

Jason watches the Batmobile take a corner impossibly fast, accelerate out of it and weave around a black sedan, heading North as fast as the car can go with the amount of traffic still on the street. For a block or two, Jason can’t see the car but he hears it, since another building obscures his view. Jason smiles again when the car appears once more, thinking that if the whole vigilante/cop thing doesn't work out for Dick, he could always try NASCAR.

Then BOOM and fire and inky black smoke. An explosion catapults the Batmobile into the air. The blast reaches Jason, the concussive force strong enough to stagger even at this distance. Though the shockwave isn't strong enough to knock him down, Jason finds himself on his knees anyway, watching as the Batmobile flips one two three times before landing on its roof. It skids down the street, trailing orange and red flames and dark smoke like the tail of a comet. Other cars cascade like dominoes out from the explosion, flipping and scattering.

_ It’s gotta be C-4 _ , Jason thinks even as he fires his grapple and launches himself into the sky, heading toward the explosion, his body working on muscle memory and instinct alone. His mind ticks through his knowledge of explosives.  _ Don’t think about Dick. What caused the explosion?  _ Jason needs to force his brain to work, even if it means he reviews basic knowledge about bombs, to keep himself moving.

The Batmobile’s gas tank is heavily insulated and durable to prevent detonation or leaks, and gasoline burns only as a vapor, not in liquid form. That makes an exploding fuel tank improbable. Combustible material with plastic, usually shaped into a block, ignited with a detonator, was much more likely. The detonator burns, the block of C-4 releases gases at incredibly high speeds with incredible force. Gases such as nitrogen and carbon oxides.  The volume of the gases is much larger than the volume of the explosive, generating high pressures at the reaction zone. The gases expand rapidly, which forms the shock wave that provides the explosive effect - the boom.

Action movies lie. The chemical reaction happens in an instant. Heroes can’t leap out of an explosion or outrun the blast once the reaction starts. Not the human ones anyway. Not even Bruce Willis. Not even the fastest member of the Batclan could have . . .   _ Stop it. I need to think.  _ In a C-4 explosion, the gases are released at 26,400 feet per second. Meaning that if the blast is powerful enough to reach that far, someone standing over seventy-three football fields away would be hit by the blast one second after detonation. One second.

Through the filters of his helmet, Jason smells something like tar or pitch, confirming his suspicions of C-4. He lands on the street, about five minutes after the explosion. Car alarms howl and honk all around. People wail. Far away a dog barks, frantic and sharp. The Batmobile burns. Mushroom cloud above, bright furious flames below.

Nobody could be alive in there. But Jason forces himself towards it anyway, hoping that the ever-increasing rain will start to put the fire out, that his soaking leather jacket and armor might give him some protection. The filters in his helmet whir to keep the smoke out.

Someone is shouting, “Batman! Batman!”

That person should shut up.

That person is Jason.

Fuck.

Sirens.

Jason shuts up.

He gets as close as he can to the car before the heat forces him to stop. He drops to his knees again, staring at the flames, the warped black metal, the shards of broken glass scattered like stars against the asphalt.

Jason remembers another explosion. A different inferno, from the inside, not the outside. TNT, back then. Different smell. A warehouse far away.

Jason also remembers another bomb on a different Batmobile. His bomb. As unlikely as it may seem, it is possible to plant a bomb even on what is probably the most well-defended vehicle on this planet. Jason did. Someone else could. Maybe this is karma for that, even though Jason never pushed the button on the detonator. Jason tried to blow up a different Batman, and now . . . Jason’s not done being karma’s kicking bag yet.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring at the wreck. Not long, because he pulls himself together before the emergency vehicles arrive, standing up and calling Oracle.

“O, locate Batman. Find him. Call him. Maybe he got out.” A faint hope, but until he can reach the Batmobile he needs to do something.

  
  


*****

 

Oracle can’t locate or contact Batman. No one can. Telemetry from the suit is non-existent. Not showing death, but not reading anything at all. 

Jason prowls around the scene, the scattered cars, the crying victims. Ambulances, fire engines and police cars flash red and blue lights, though the EMTs and cops give the Red Hood a healthy distance. Jason even sees the Commissioner, stepping out of his car as if he has weights in the pockets of his battered trench coat. The flickering of the fire and the coruscating emergency lights paint his face blue, red, white, orange, with intermittent shadow in between. He has never looked so old. The fire fighters start to spray the Batmobile with foam and Jason backs away.

Jason can’t feel anything. He can’t think anymore. He’s the explosive expert but the Batmobile is still too hot to examine. He doesn’t expect to find Dick, but he heads in the direction the Batmobile came from, passing the building that blocked his view earlier. He is looking for a body, despite knowing (dreading?) that it is in the car behind him. He calls for Batman again, loud, all the way up and down the street. He peers down the alleys, ducks behind trash cans, and pokes into shadowy doorways. Despite his frantically beating heart, his search is methodical. The search is just to keep him occupied. He's in a holding pattern.

Finally Alfred calls. Jason has been ignoring Oracle since she told him that she had no signal and no response, but he stops moving when he hears Alfred’s crisp British accent.

“Come home, Master Jason. Come home.”

Alfred doesn’t know that Jason and Dick are together. Why is he being so nice? No one knows what Dick means to Jason.

What is the procedure anyway? Maybe the car is cool enough now, and someone can get in. Someone should take the body.  

Jason tries to speak but croaks instead. He clears his throat. “I need to talk to Commissioner Gordon. There isn’t anyone else to do it.”

“Master Tim is on his way back.”

As much as Jason wants to run away, run away and never come back, he can’t put this on Replacement. Still a teenager, Tim doesn’t need to do this, and Jason doesn’t think that he could live with himself if he stepped aside for Tim to take this burden.

“I’m heading back to Gordon. I’m doing it.”

“I’ll send another car to your location.” Jason knows what the other car is for. No one is going to take Dick’s body from them. Dick isn’t going to go to some cold city morgue. Jason will bring him home.

Jason tells himself that he can handle anything -- even this -- for a minute. He can get through this next minute, definitely. Then the next minute. Then the next. It probably won’t take all that long. Maybe fifteen minutes? Jason can endure any torture for fifteen little bites of time.

He gets back to the Batmobile. The first responders hang back, even Gordon keeping a respectful distance. Jason walks around to the driver’s side, crouches down low to look inside. He’ll need to figure out how to get the door open. Surely the firefighters have something. Jaws of Life, aren’t they called? What idiot decided to call them that?

The seat is empty.

The whole damn car is empty. There is no body.

Jason grabs a flashlight from his jacket, shines it around just to be sure, but the vehicle is definitely deserted. Jason’s not sure if it’s elation or disbelief that is crawling up his throat, painful in its intensity. There’s a rat in his throat, claws tearing and teeth gnashing, because how can this be possible?

He rips off his helmet. He needs to breathe, not sure why his face is wet even before he exposes his skin to the rain. He needs to figure out what happened. Dick had definitely been behind the wheel when Jason first saw the Batmobile. No driving AI, no matter how sophisticated, could have done those maneuvers at that speed in traffic. Something must have tipped Dick off, he hit the emergency door release, and jumped out.

Jason forces words past the rodent in his windpipe. “He’s not here. He got out. Must have had some warning.”

Gordon looks at Jason, and could that be pity? Jason doesn’t need anyone’s fucking pity. Dick bailed, before the explosion, during the few seconds when Jason couldn’t see the vehicle. It is the only possible conclusion, because that car is as empty as Jason’s coffin.

“Look for yourself, Commish. No body in there. We’ve got to find him.”

Jason shoves the helmet back on and runs, shouting into the comm, words gasping out to Oracle and Alfred. Dick is somewhere nearby, and was alive. At least before the explosion.

_ Think.  _ Where would Dick go? What would he do, if he thought the car was going to blow? Jason knows the answer, as soon as he asks himself the question. Dick would go up, if he was at all physically capable of it. For Dick, height means safety.

Jason stops in front of the building that blocked his view from the skyscraper. He forces himself to remember the first building he’d seen the Batmobile pass after he regained sight of it. He walks to it and grapples up the nearest building on the West side of the street, where most of the buildings are only five or six stories tall. They’d be easier to get on top of, if Dick was injured, and they’re also on the driver’s side of the car. He parkours from roof to roof, stopping to search each one, heading towards the corner he’d seen the Batmobile come screaming around a lifetime ago.

On the last building before Jason lost sight of Dick, Jason tells himself that Dick must be here. That thought is too much pressure, and his heart joins the rat in his throat. Jason tries to think logically to calm himself down. He still hasn’t tried the other side of the street. He could have missed something. Don’t panic. Not yet.

Then Jason sees a shadow in the corner that’s the wrong shape. He turns on infrared -- he was an idiot for not doing it sooner -- and the misshapen shadow glows red and orange. Not fire this time, garish in the night, but life.

Jason drops to his knees, for the third time tonight. Supplication. It seems fitting. He switches to normal vision so he can examine Batman. Dick. The man he - well, it’s complicated. Maybe loves, though they haven’t said that to each other. Maybe Jason will, now.  

Dick is unconscious, but breathing. Twisted leg, shoulder out of joint. How the hell did he make it up here? Why isn’t he awake? Jason’s scan reveals a piece of debris piercing the suit in Dick’s abdomen. There’s blood coating the shrapnel, and now that Jason is looking for it, he sees a trail leading from the nearest wall. Hopefully there isn’t a concussion on top of the blood loss.

“Alfie, I found him. He’s here. He’s alive. Rough shape but alive.”    

Alfred breathes out, loud enough for Jason to hear it gust over the comm. “Thank God. I’m coming in the Batplane and I’ll lower a gurney for him.”

Jason gingerly takes Dick’s hand. He squeezes. Dick squeezes back.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think. I've now written a follow up to this story, and turned this into a series. 
> 
> I'm also going to open prompts on my tumblr .


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